captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> ifill: a 29-year-old n.s.a. contractor claimed responsibility for revealing top security government surveillance programs. good evening. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. on the "newshour" tonight, we talk to former director of national intelligence dennis blair and debate the security and privacy issues raised by the disclosure of the classified programs. >> ifill: we kick off a week dedicated to food security. tonight, a story from costa rica on the struggle to maintain forests while encouraging farming. it's part of our series: "food for nine billion." >> the magic is going to come in figuring out how to value nature in our decisions, how to see nature as an asset.

>> woodruff: jeffrey brown recaps president obama's one-on- one talks with china's new leader and looks at what progress, if any, the two made on cybersecurity, north korea and more. >> ifill: and ray suarez explores the sometimes wild, sometimes weird outcomes when scientists experiment on animals with the author of "frankenstein's cat". >> it surprised me how far along this technology was: that you can now buy a glow-in-the-dark genetically engineered pet, or remote control a cockroach with a kit you can buy online. >> ifill: that's all ahead on tonight's "newshour". >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: >> more than two years ago, the people of b.p. made a commitment to the gulf. and everyday since, we've worked hard to keep it. today, the beaches and gulf are open for everyone to enjoy. we shared what we've learned so that we can all produce energy more safely. b.p. is also committed to

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>> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> woodruff: the uproar over sweeping government surveillance has now expanded to the source of the revelations. he's defending his actions, saying "the public is owed an explanation" about what's been going on. >> even if you're doing nothing wrong, you're being watched and recorded sneud the man is collecting data on millions of phone calls and internet communications. the guardian newspaper in london and the "washington post" broke the story last week. on sunday snowden permitted them to make his identity public.

he also made a lengthy video statement for the guardian, produced by documentary film maker laura poitress and journalist glen greenwall. >> i sitting at my desk certainly had the authority to wire tap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if i had a personal email. you don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion by somebody even by a wrong call. then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made. >> snowden is 29. he briefly workd as a contractor for the n.s.a., employed by the private defense consulting firm boos, allen, hamilton. he said he felt compelled to speak out about what he calls wrongdoing. >> the more you talk about it, the more you're ignored. you're told it's not a problem until you realize that these

things need to be determined by the public not by hired by the government. >> he was interviewed by the government in hong kong where he said he's seeking asylum. the former contractor indicated that he expects u.s. authority to prosecute him. >> you can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk. because they're such powerful adversaries. no one can meaningful oppose them. if they want to get you, they'll get you in time. >> woodruff: at the white house today, spokesman jay carney would not discuss snowden or the case. other top officials did speak out over the weekend before learning of snowden's identity. >> for me it is literally not figuratively... >> woodruff: on saturday the director of national intelligence, james clapper, told nbc news that the leaks put the nation in danger. >> this is a key tool for preserving, protecting the

nation's safety and security. >> woodruff: on the sunday talk shows the issue made strange fellows of lawmakers across the political spectrum. republican congressman mike rogers of chrs the house intelligence committee. >> these programs that are authorized by the court, by the way, only focus on non-united states persons overseas. that gets lost in this debate. this is our pieces of the puzzle. you have to have all the pieces of the puzzle to try to put it together. that's what we found went wrong in 9/11. >> woodruff: california democrat dianne feinstein chairs the senate intelligence committee. >> here's the rub. the instances where this has produced good... has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks is all classified. that's what's so hard about this. >> woodruff: another democratic senator, mark udall of colorado, argueded the programs have gone too far. >> my concern is this is vast.

it hasn't been proven that it works. uniquely of valuable intelligence hasn't been proven to have disrupted plots. again it's the scale of this that really concerns me and the fact that the american public doesn't know about it. >> woodruff: and republican rand paul of kentucky insisted the programs are a violation of americans' fundamental rights. >> get a warrant. go after a terrorist or a murderer or a rapist but don't trawl through a billion phone records every day. that is unconstitutional. it invades our privacy. and i'm going to be seeing if i can challenge this at the supreme court level. >> woodruff: snowden is believed to be still in hong kong. it's unclear how the semiautonomous chinese territory will handle his case. hong kong has offered asylum to others in the past. but also holds an extradition treaty with the united states. for more on all this, we turn to retired admiral dennis blair.

director of national intelligence in 2009 and 2010. in that position he oversaw the entire intelligence community including the n.s.a. let me first ask you about this question. how could a 29-year-old technical assistant who says he didn't have a high school diploma, only worked for a few years for a private contractor, have access to this kind of information? >> well, i haven't read everything that this young man has talked about or put out, judy. but just listening to parts of it he clearly did not have the full picture of these programs that are run by the intelligence agencies. so he reactedded to the little piece that he knew and he took a very dangerous action. >> woodruff: are you saying you believe he's embellishing what he knows? >> yes. it sounds like he has an overinflated idea of the power

that he had as a low-level employee. he did not understand all the checks and balances or the intent of the program. he is making some pretty wild, wild staimghts. by the way,... statements. by the way, he's violating laws to talk about these programs. so i don't think he's a terribly credible witness here. >> woodruff: if he didn't see that much, then how much damage is done by his releasing or revealing this? >> i think the single point in all of this that i agree with, judy, is that the... we need to take some of the mystery but not the secrecy out of the intelligence programs that we use to protect americans. our whole system is set up on foreign intelligence agencies gather information from foreigners, not from americans, overseas. our domestic security agencies,

the f.b.i., state and local police all work in the united states on threats to america. the problem is the terrorist groups don't recognize this fine distinction. they send communications back and forth to americans, to people in the united states, and so the wholly lab rat procedure that we had set up is to keep the foreign intelligence agencies on the side of gathering information against foreigners and only gather information about americans under a court order, the equivalent of a warrant that was talked about earlier. it's this back-and-forth, trying to protect the rights of americans while yet making information available to the domestic law enforcement services that will help them to protect americans that all of these systems are set up. >> woodruff: but it sounds like in so doing what the intelligence agencies have is access to millions if not billions of telephone/internet

communications from people who are... who have nothing to do with terrorism. >> no, i think that's a misconception, judy. they don't. they have access only to information which they have convinced a court, the foreign intelligence surveillance court, that has probable value. it's a probable cause sort of justification. at that point, let's take an example. a foreign terrorist suspect makes a phone call to a number in the united states and the national security agency happens to pick up the foreign end of that conversation. in order to know who that call was made to, when it was taking place, the location, the national security agency has to go to the foreign intelligence surveillance court, get permission to search the databases of... that are collected by the communications companies for that number, find

out the number, find out who owns that number. it is at that point turned over to the f.b.i. for them to investigate. so the only numbers that the n.s. a.... the only numbers that the n.s.a. actually gains information about are those which are linked to suspicious activity gathered overseas and under court order. >> woodruff: we heard senator rand paul say that this is unconstitutional, what's going on. he said he doesn't know of any law that authorizes all this data collection. >> well, with due respect to the senator, i think he's just flat wrong on that. this is under a law that was passed by the congress in its current form about 2007-2008. it goes through several branches of government in addition to the intelligence agencies, the department of justice oversees it. the request is then made to the foreign intelligence surveillance court.

there's then followal up and there are reports to congress routinely on this activity. so i think it's very constitutional. it involves all branches of the federal government. it's designed to protect americans while protecting their civil liberties. i think it's an extremely well run and constitutional program. >> woodruff: admiral blair, what about another criticism we heard from senator mark udall who said that he has seen nothing that proves that this system works. there's nothing proven that it has actually disrupted a terrorist plot. >> again, with due respect to the senator, that's also flat wrong. there are several plots which were thwarted by the use of this... and i'm going to say this type of program. i don't want to discuss individual programs. but this system of overseas intelligence linked to an american phone number being turned over under court order to

american law enforcement companies have thwarted multiple, multiple attacks. i'll just leave it at that. >> woodruff: let me come back to a question i asked you earlier because i'm not sure i understood your answer. if edward snowden does not have access to as much information as it appears he may, then what is the damage that's been done by this? >> well, the damage in all of this is that in discussing the general concepts of the programs -- which, as i say, are fully authorized and supervised -- if it's done in an uncoordinated and in a free lance manner, individual pieces of how the programs are actually set up can be released which then, of course, make it easier for our enemies to evade them and to mount their threats to

americans in different ways. so i'm all for talking about the general principles of these programs. i'm all for examples which illustrate how they work. but when those who have been inside the program talk about specific parts of them, it poses a danger because our enemies use them to learn and then come at us in new ways and it costs us a lot more time, effort, trouble and there are periods of danger until we can get back on top of it. >> woodruff: admiral dennis blair, the former director of national intelligence, we thank you very much for talking with us. >> you're welcome, judy. >> ifill: so, is edward snowden a hero or a turncoat? we'll debate that later in the broadcast. also still to come on the "newshour", why some farmers are trying to preserve forests in costa rica. the u.s. president and the chinese president meet. what happens next? and how scientists engineered cats to glow in the dark. but first, with the other news of the day, here's kwame holman. >> holman: car bombers have struck again in iraq, this time killing at least 57 people.

the attacks today were the latest in a new wave of shi'ite- sunni violence. the first targets were markets near the city of baqouba in a suburb north of baghdad and in the city of tuz khormato. later, bombs went off in mosul, aimed at police stations. the obama administration could decide this week whether it's time to ship arms to rebels in syria. top u.s. officials began meeting today to consider the question. and secretary of state john kerry put off a trip to the middle east to take part in the sessions. white house spokesman jay carney would not say which way the president is leaning. >> the president has made clear, i have made clear, that all options remain on the table in terms of syria and... although he has also said that he does not foresee a circumstance that would involve american boots on the ground. but options... he insists that all options be available to him and he is constantly reviewing them. >> holman: the u.s. is under growing pressure to act, despite

concerns that weapons would end up in the hands of extremists. that's because syrian government troops have been retaking key areas, with the help of hezbollah guerrillas from lebanon. theyaptured the town of qusair, and now the city of homs appears to be next on the target list. the world's carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high last year. the international energy agency reported today that release of the greenhouse gas rose more than one percent. emissions from the u.s. and europe actually fell, but those reductions were canceled by china's growing carbon dioxide footprint. chinese emissions were up more than 3.5%. in south africa, former president nelson mandela was hospitalized in pretoria for a third day. doctors said he's in "serious but stable" condition with a recurring lung infection. members of his family could be seen arriving at the hospital where he's being treated. it's the fourth time he's been hospitalized since december. mandela is 94 years old. jury selection began today in

sanford, florida, in the murder trial of a neighborhood watch volunteer, george zimmerman. he's accused of killing an unarmed teenager, trayvon martin, in february 2012. the case has drawn national attention. zimmerman says he acted in self- defense. martin's family and prosecutors claim he was a victim of racial profiling. the senate moved today to pass a new, five-year farm bill. it would cost almost $100 billion a year and make small cuts in food stamps, which account for 80% of the bill's cost. the house could take up its version of the bill later this month. republican leaders there are pushing for much larger cuts in food stamps. president obama has nominated jason furman to chair his "council of economic advisers". furman is a longtime presidential advisor on tax policy. the president said today he never forgets he's fighting for the middle class. and on wall street, the dow jones industrial average lost

nine points. the nasdaq rose four points to close at xxxx. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to gwen. >> ifill: we return now to the story of edward snowden, the 29- year-old former c.i.a. employee and intelligence contrto who's admitted leaking government secrets. is he a criminal who put americanst risk? or is he a hero who told americans what they need to know about how closely their government is watching them? we have two points of view on that from jane harman, a former nine-term member of congress who was the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. she's now president of the woodrow wilson international center. and author and journalist james bamford, who has written extensively about the n.s.a. and other intelligence agencies. welcome to you both. is edward snowden a leaker or a whistle blower? >> definitely a whistle blower. he's not profiting from this in anyway. he's going to be harmed very severely because of this. he's doing this because he thinks it's right because he thinks that the public should know that the government was

picking up and storing billions of their telephone records. you know, they had a debate about this in england in the last few weeks. it was public. it was about a bill going through congress to do a similar thing. over here we don't do that. we just secretly do all these things. the public has a right to know what's being done with their telephone records. >> he's a leaker. what he did was inappropriate. i do think we should have a public debate. we actually had a public debate around the 2008 amendment, the foreign intelligence surveillance act. this law has been on the books since 1978. it was passed in response to the abuses in the nixon administration and pursuant to the church commission which investigatedded a lot of intelligence abuses in the mid '70s. it was passed by overwhelming bipartisan margins and it set up the senate intelligence and house intelligence committees in addition to the court to review

individual actions against u.s. persons. it continued that way through 2011 when it was clear the authorities were outdated. then we amended it after a public debate in the united states congress. it works well. >> ifill: senator udall, we just heardlk this program. is it possible to share this kind of information as edward snowden did and not share it at such a scale. is that the problem? >> have him share the information about what he picked up? >> ifill: so much of it. well, we've yet to see what else he has out there. right now he released basically two big programs. the one about the telephones and the one about prison which is intercepting the internet traffic. i don't think that was a big release. i mean, people should know this is going on with their communication. what's the pig secret? the terrorists obviously have

assumed all along we're doing this. why keep it a secret from the american public. >> ifill: he's made available to newspapers power point slides of which they only published four of them because they thought he was giving them things that were too secret. >> i can't make any judgment about those. what i'm making a judgment on what was seen. what we've seen is the government access without any knowledge of any public about access to billions of telephone records every day. every day somebody picks up the telephone, makes a phone call, a record of that phone call is being kept by n.s.a. people should know that. the same thing with the internet. >> ifill: jane harman, let me read to you something. "there is no doubt that it has transformed itself into the largest, most covert and potentially most intreusive intelligence agency ever created." >> well, it's large. i agree with that, but the programs we're talking about were developed in congress pursuant to debate. they are subject to oversight by congress.

there is a federal court, that's what the f.i.s.a. court is, a rotating court that includes 11 federal judges at least three of whom have to live near washington so they can personally review any individualized requests to read content or listen to... in fact, the phone records are records. but to listen to somebody, it's prospective. it's not retroactive. no one is listening to our phone calls right now unless there's an individualized record. but at any rate, congress passed these laws and. my experience, having worked there and having been involved in the 2008 amendments to fisa, having been very distressed at the early bush administration wasn't following fisa right after 9/11 but at any rate these laws work well. the oversight is robust by the senators and house members who do it mostly on the intelligence committee. >> ifill: there are laws. there are courts. what's wrong with that? if it's legal or is that what's wrong with it? >> congress, please. where were they when the bush

administration was doing their warrantless eavesdropping? >> i'll answer that. let me finish. you know, the congress... is senate intelligence committee when it started out, it started out as an organization to protect the public from the intelligence agencies. now it's simply become a cheering gallery for the intelligence agencies. they want to give it more money. they want to give it more power. and you can see what happens during the bush administration. >> i served there for eight years. i don't think i was a cheering gallery for the bush practices. first of all, i objected once i understood it, that the bush terrorist surveillance program, t.s.p. was being conductedded outside of fisa. that was not information i had. i was in the gang of eight, let into this very, very secret program. i was told every time it strictly complied with law. what i wasn't told was these were bush laws made in the justice department. when that was clear i and many others in congress spent a lot

of time making sure that this program, which was known to the public -- i mean first of all it was leaked to the "new york times." everybody was aware about the phone records collection program and what it was for. -- was strictly covered by fisa. >> ifill: let me ask you both a question. there have been at least two polls out today showing most americans think it's fine. they don't have a problem with this. let me ask you this question. what has the gathering of this information, this effort that the n.s.a. has spent to gather personal information, what has that hurt? >> what it hurts is a democracy. a democracy is not supposed to do things like that. you're supposed to have open societies where governments, if they want to do that, do what the british did. bring a bill through congress and say we want to do this. we want to have all your records every single day sent to the n.s.a. see how much of a vote you'll get on that. they tried that in britain and they voted it down. >> again it's telephone numbers

not attachd to people. and the only access you can get to this meta-data, if a u.s. citizen or a u.s. legal resident is involved is on an individual basis once you go through the federal court to get an individualized warrant which is what the fourth amendment requires. >> ifill: when you were in congress, how often were you briefed on programs like this? >> well,... ifill: they're not secret anymore. >> but i was briefed regularly on programs. did i want more information? yes, i wanted the memos that the office of legal counsel, the o.l.c., and the justice department was providing. we couldn't get those. yeah, i wanted more robust briefings and i think congress should push for that. i'm not say this is perfect. i think there ought to be a robust public debate. i think we need a comprehensive, a new comprehensive set of legal boundaries around our post 9/11 policy. we're in the second decade. >> ifill: that's where i want to end this. there has to be a line somewhere

between privacy and security. you agree on that. where is the line? >> well, the line you know, the line, i would put it, if you're going to invade american privacy, you bring a bill through congress and you do it publicly that way. you don't do it secretly like they used to do in east germany during the cold war. we're talking about having a debate now. how would we have had this debate, how would we be sitting here talking about this if it wasn't for edward snowden? >> well, i think... i applaud what mark udall has done and ron widen. they made clear they disagreed with some some aspects of this. they pursued their disagreement inside the system. and i think ultimately they would have caused the debate that we should be having. i'm sorry. i think americans want our country protected. i don't think it's a choice between security and liberty. i don't think it's a zero sum gain. it's a positive sum gain.

you get more of both or less of both. we created a private civil lib liberties commission when we reorganized the intelligence community in 2004. you're rolling your eyes. the senate finally confirmed the person. that commission... >> ifill: we're not going to resolve this tonight unfortunately. jane harman, james sanford, thank you both very much. we'll talk about it some more. >> my pleasure. >> woodruff: now, we kick off a week-long series on food and how climate change is impacting what we produce and how we eat. tonight, special correspondent sam eaton reports on new efforts to preserve forests while keeping up the demand for farming in costa rica. it's part of our series "food for nine billion" in partnership with p.r.i.'s the world, homeland productions, american public media's "marketplace" and the center for investigative reporting. >> eaton: this is a typical farm in costa rica-- about ten acres of coffee mixed with more than a

dozen food crops like corn, beans and bananas. but when 65-year-old farmer ademar serrano abarca purchased this land a decade ago, it was with the idea of doing things differently. instead of clearing all the trees-- a common practice in tropical agriculture-- he set aside more than a quarter of it, letting the forest regenerate. >> (translated): not all of us share these same ideas. other farmers don't have this, they've lost it. but for me, it's a gain. everything you see here is a gain for me. >> eaton: worldwide, agriculture represents a huge threat to the planets remaining natural areas. costa rica is trying to preserve what nature it has left. it's is one of the first countries to compensate farmers like abarca for leaving part of their land out of production. the minister of agriculture, gloria abraham peralta, says policies like this have allowed costa rica to go from having one

of the fastest rates of deforestation on the planet to today boasting around 50% forest cover. >> (translated): it's a commitment to the future not by the big companies or the big farms, but by the small farmers who know that their future depends on how they care for their farm and their ability to adapt. the future generations food supply also depends on that! i think that we as a country can be a good public example at an international level of what can be done. >> eaton: those federal incentives sweeten the pot for small farmers like abarca. but the benefits of fostering biodiversity on the farm don't stop there. scientists at the nearby las cruces biological station have been researching how farmers like abarca are gaining from the services nature provides. gretchen daily directs stanford

university's center for conservation biology. >> so the land is producing about 15 food types for people here. then on top of that there's birds providing pest control services. the vast majority of pests on crops are controlled naturally by birds, by wasps, by bats, and other things. >> eaton: in the past, farms were generally considered to be ecological deserts, completely barren of the rich biodiversity that exists on nature preserves. but as scientists study more and more small farms like this one, with its mix of trees and coffee and food crops, they're finding an incredible amount of biodiversity can coexist with food production. it's early morning, and daily's team is stringing out mist nets in abarca's coffee fields. so far they've captured more than a hundred different species of birds on these farms and forest fragments. it's part of a project to quantify their value in dollars. each bird, like this rufous-

capped warbler, plays a specific role. and that role corresponds to an economic benefit to the farmer. >> some of these birds, we have records going back about 14 years. >> so what we're trying to find out is how many insects these birds eat. if you have this little bit of tree cover here, how many warblers will you have and how much of a boost will these warblers give to the coffee farmers? this one eats the biggest and most worrying pest on coffee, we found in its droppings a lot of those little bugs that cause the most damage. so it adds a huge boost to the income of farmers. >> eaton: daily and her team have been tracking the income potential of every insect eater and pollinator on these farms. it's a 24-hour job. these bats run the night shift, consuming pests, carrying pollen and scattering seeds until dawn.

>> each night they can consume about their body weight worth of insect flesh, mosquitoes and other kinds of pests that the farmers don't want. >> eaton: but it's nature's smallest pollinators who have so far brought the biggest gains. in a study daily ran on nearby coffee farms, she documented how forests next to the farms and the hundreds of species of native bees that inhabit them are a boon to coffee production, with the bees leaving the forest and spreading pollen from plant to plant for that one week of the year that the coffee plants bloom. >> so you need to have forest integrated into the coffee farm right next to where the farmers are working and the bees then fly out and they're workers just like the people are. on the one farm where we worked we measured the value of that and it boosts yield by about 20% and that lead to an income boost of about $60,000 per year, which

really put those farmers into a good economic position. >> eaton: and it's not just small farms that stand to gain from biodiversity. costa rica is the largest pineapple producer in the world, but a vast monocrop like this is extremely vulnerable to costly pest infestations, which are becoming more severe with climate change. most farms use huge amounts of pesticides to control the outbreaks. but this farm is using trees instead, offering a window into how even large scale, industrial agriculture can benefit from working with nature rather than against it. jennifer monge manages the b jimenez farm in northern costa rica. she says keeping half the land in forest provides a natural pest barrier as well as creating a cooler microclimate, which protects the pineapples from damaging heat waves and drought. >> (translated): so we've been able to increase our yield

without touching the forest. we've increased our efficiency in managing pests, we've increased our overall productivity without increasing our workforce. >> eaton: yields on this pineapple farm are higher than average and the farm is profitable. gretchen daily says examples like these are proof that the model is scaleable. >> the idea in the past is that to have a really high yield, you have to blitz it clean and just plant a monoculture of pineapple or sugarcane or coffee or whatever it is. but what were finding today is that actually you can sustain really high yield and pretty high biodiversity in these new, really smart production systems that are economically attractive as well. >> eaton: with two thirds of our crops worldwide depending on some form of pollination, daily says more and more farms, large and small, will need to integrate nature. and if they don't, the drive to produce more food could wipe out

our greatest asset for adapting to the challenges of the future. >> and so the magic in the future to get us out of the crisis we face now with all of these intense pressures on land, with us catapulting to nine billion people on the planet, diets shifting more towards meat, climate change unfolding in ways that we can't really predict and other things, the magic is going to come in figuring out how to value nature in our decisions, how to see nature as an asset, a natural asset that can be the engine of human development in the coming century. >> eaton: perhaps a good place to start, she says, is by seeing nature not as something separate from us, to be preserved and protected, but as an integral part of our daily lives, and, ultimately, of our survival as a species.

>> woodruff: you can find links to our partners stories in the "food for nine billion" series on our website. and tomorrow, we'll look at the struggle for water in booming qatar. >> ifill: now to the u.s. relationship with china and a look at what was and wasn't accomplished at the weekend summit between president obama and chinese president xi jingping. jeffrey brown reports. brown: outwardly at least there was an air of california casual at the two-day summit in palm springs between presidents obama and xi. at one point on saturday, the two men took a nearly hour-long walk ditching jackets, ties and advisors. still there were no breakthroughs on the issue topping the agenda: u.s. accusations of wide-ranging cyber attacks by china. last month a confidential pentagon report charged chinese

hackers had stolen design data on more than two dozen american weapons systems including an advanced patriot missile system and the f35 joint strike fighter. aides say president obama confronted xi with specific evidence. in public though, the language was measured. >> we're going to have to work very hard to build a system of defenses and protections both in the private sector and in the public sector even as we negotiate with other countries around setting up a common rules of the road. >> we need to pay close attention to this issue and find ways to resolve this issue. this matter can be an area for china and united states to work together with each other in a pragmatic way. >> brown: on other issues the two presidents did agree to work on reducing production of powerful greenhouse gases called hydro florocarbon. they joined in speaking against

a nuclear-armed north korea. china has criticized pong i don't think for recent threats south korea and the u.s. and on sunday just a day after the obama-xi summit north korea held its first official talks with south korea in two years. a higher-level round of talks is set for wednesday. >> brown: more now, from douglas paal of the carnegie endowment for international peace. he's a former national security council staffer and state department official. and retired army col. larry wortzel is a commissioner on the congressionally chartered u.s.- china economic and security review commission. he's also a former military attacheè to china. larry, let me start with you. first, just looking at the meeting itself, the optics of the two leaders walking together casually, how important is that in the broader scheme of things? >> well, i think that's important because it helps set the phone for how they'll relate to each other and perhaps how

the senior government staffs of the two countries will relate to each other. but beyond that, not a lot was accomplished here. >> well, doug paal, let me bring you in. is it more at this point about fleshing out the larger relationship or about accomplishing specific things along the way. >> ververy, very much about the larger relationship. the united states and china, like rising power and the established powers of history, are coming into greater conflict. much more friction between the two of them as china power grows and extends into america's traditional spheres of influence. how to manage that to keep it from becoming out of control is is a big challenge. mr. xi is coming in for a ten-year tenure of office by all expectations. getting him early to think about these big issues and to put before him those big issues, our ambitions and our fears in a kind of quiet setting is a way to sort of shape china's

responses to this developing situation. >> brown: when you say big issues, you mean the big issue of the relationship between the two as opposed to, say, cyber spying. >> that is part of it and an important part of it. is floatir navies. we have intelligence aircrafts and ships near the chinese keeft. we have important territorial disputes between china and its neighbors and we have the big issue of north korea nuclear proceed live layings. >> brown: larry wortzel, come in on that. are you suggesting we should be pushing more on something like cyber spying and not worry so much about how that impacts the larger relationship? >> well, i think how we push an issue is important. but quite frankly, xi laid down a number of very strong markers that highlighted where we disagree on sovereignty on certain islands, on u.s. arms sales to taiwan and issues relating to china's sovereignty

and his foreign minister made it very clear that although china may agree that in the long term the korean peninsula should be denuclearized, we take very different approaches to it. so i think in the end what this did for xi is to strengthen his own message at home of a strong china, strengthen his communist party line about china's dream and to strengthen the idea that china is is now a great power state which was part of his press release. >> brown: i'm wondering about that, doug paal. is a meeting like this, picking up on that, more important for the chinese than it is for us? >> i doubt it's more important tore them than for us. i think it will be equally important in the long run. this is an era of great interconnected issues. we have a nuclear weapons overhanging us. if we can't work our way through some of these problems, no

matter how nationalistic each of our leaders has to be for his respective domestic audience we could have a disastrous 21st century. it's really important to throw the hail mary pass and try to make something work. we won't know the results of this for a while. we've had small discussions on cyber security and on h.f.c.s which in some ways were positive. but the real test of this will be a few years from now. >> what about on the north korea issue. did you see much movement? >> there's been important movement by the chinese on the north korean issue. whether it amounts to anything truly substantial will take some time. china used to always say our first interest is civility on the peninsula. our second is denuclearization. they've now shifted those priorities putting denuclearization first which means implicitly that they were will to go take some risk of stability to restrain north korea's nuclear development. >> larry wortzel, is there... going back to the larger issue here. is there a potential for a fear

of coming to a kind of cold-war relationship? or is that what this is about, trying to avoid that? >> well, i mean, we're certainly in a number of areas in a competition and to a certain extent confrontational relationship. i think it's useful if both leaders can back away from that. we are not going to agree on a lot of things. and i think on the chinese side, they're probably a little bit concerned that the tone of what came out of this gets delivered once the national security add vier changes. they're probably a little concerned about what happens when we get a new u.n. ambassador who has focused on human rights. >> brown: explain that for us a little bit because there's a new team coming in. >> there's a new team coming in. now, in china, you know, you go to... you can go out to the far

west. if you don't follow what the party line says. but in the united states it's not unusual to have national security advisors being stronger or weaker or running off on what they think ought to be done despite the president's guidance. but i am pleased to see that president obama reinforced the importance of the rebalancing to the pacific in his remarks about this summit. >> doug paal, just very quickly before we go, i do want to ask you about edward snowden who we heard discussed in our earlier segment thought to be in hong kong seeking asylum there. what are the chances of that, the relationship with hong kong and china? >> i suspect he's getting out of hong kong because he didn't realize until very recently that hong kong has a strong extradition arrangement with the united states. i don't understand how the chinese would want to keep snowden there. this would be a huge issue between us if they were to interfere with the extradition process. they do have that right but i

think they will not exercise it. >> brown: doug paal, larry wortzel, thank you both very much. >> thank you. >> woodruff: finally tonight, a glimpse inside the wild world of animal biotechnology. ray suarez has that book conversation. >> suarez: glow in the dark cats, goats that produce human pharmaceuticals in their milk, mutant mice engineered to have cancer or alzheimers disease. they may sound like science fiction but these animals all exist today. sign tiffs and researchers can create animals genetically tailored to desired specifications nature never intended. is it desirable just because it's possible? are there ethical boundaries that must be watched? emily anthes is author of frankenstein's cat, cuddling up to biotech's brave new beast. she joined me now.

your book is chock full of moral mine fields. had you realized how far along this science was when you started on this journey? >> i had some idea about what was going on in university and scientific laboratories. i knew scientists were tinkering with genes and brains, but it surprised me how far along this technology was in terms of trickling out to the public. you can now buy a glo in the dark genetically engineered pet or remote control a cockroach with a kit you can buy online. that was really surprised to me. >> now, we humans have been shaping animals to our needs for thousands and thousands of years. what's different about now? has science leapt ahead much faster than it took, for instance, to domesticate a cow. >> if you look at something like the dog, we've altered that immensely just through breeding. but our molecular technologies

allow us to make changes more quickly and more targeted changes. you can change one gene instead of having to cross breed and also to start taking genetic materials from one species and putting it into another species. you could never get a jelly fish and a cat to interbreed but you can now take a jelly fish gene and put it into a cat. >> suarez: and that's one of the things that pulls you up short. animals are useful. they're enjoyable. they're our companions. they're our food. all these different categories seem to be spilling over into each other. nobody contemplated, i don't think, a glow in the dark cat. >> right. it's not something that was intended to be a pet. scientists created it to sort of answer some basic biological research questions but now that it exists, it could become a pet. it could be used in all sorts of different ways. >> suarez: are there places where human beings almost instinctively put on the brakes,

where breeding two kinds of dogs for desirable traits might be okay but taking something out of a fish and putting it into a plant might not be okay or out of an animal and putting it into a human might not be okay. where we haven't even really thought it through but it just seems wrong? >> we have emotional responses to a lot of these developments. i think they're particularly strong when the animal looks different. so there are some genetically engineered animals. you can take a gene from a spider and put it into a goat but it still looks like a goat. but if you start getting animals like cats that glow green or cyborg insects that have wires coming out of them, i think that's a little more emotionally tougher to digest because they look strange. >> suarez: do we also have a hierarchy, unspoken, unthought out really, where there are things that we might think it's okay to do to a cockroach, to a fish that would suddenly make us

feel pretty bad if we saw somebody doing them to a horse or a dog? >> absolutely. we have hugely inconsistent views towards animals. some animals our society loves: horses, dogs, mammals and particularly primates, things that are closer to us. we generally tend to want to mess with them less than things like invert brats which seem foreign and maybe we don't have as much sympathy for the insect or the cockroach. >> suarez: were there times when you were doing the research -- because you saw a lot of these animals one on one -- where you suddenly said to yourself, i thought i was okay with this but now i'm not so sure? >> one of the big ones for me -- and this is more of a thought experiment than something i actually saw -- but it's been suggested that maybe if we're going to keep eating meat we should engineer farm animals that don't feel pain. logically that sounds like a good idea. if we're going to be using these animals for food, then it's better for them if they don't

feel pain. but there's something emotionally in me that resists that idea. it seems like maybe going a step too far. it seems like maybe it's alleviating our own unease with what we're doing. i think i worry that if it gets too easy to use animals, if we eliminate our own discomfort, then maybe it will give us an excuse to do more of it. that's something that sort of sits uneasily with me. >> suarez: you walk us through the science of cloning. in some detail and in some length. it tush turns out it takes thousands of procedures in some of the early cases to end up with one living being. as we go down this frontier, there's going to be a lot of operations on a lot of animals that can't consent and can't refuse. >> cloning is an incredibly inefficient procedure. there's been some discussion about clones themselves and whether they're healthy or have

defects. their welfare... there are welfare concerns there. but the welfare issue that doesn't get talked about much, as you point out, is to clone one person's pet dog you have to harvest eggs from hundreds of dogs and put dozens more through these surrogate pregnancies. so there's a question about whether it's fair to enlist all of these animals in the creation of a duplicate of somebody's pet. >> suarez: as a frivolous case, as much as people do love their pets, but if we can stop fatal diarrhea among infants in the developing world by putting something into goat's milk, maybe that's a decent use of milk that we were going to create anyway frankly diswroo absolutely. that's one of the things that i really encourage people to do is that biotechnology can seem very scary when you think about it in the abstract. but when we look at individual cases on a case-by-case basis or particular applications, some of them may be more justified than

others. and if it's a life-saving intervention either for animals or for humans, perhaps we can justify some of this experimentation. >> suarez: what's next? i mean, are there some things that we're close to that are going to shock people when they come to fruition or come to market? >> i think the area of cyborgs is a huge growth area, something scientists have done so there are steerable cockroaches and rodents but i think this meshing of the biotic and the abiotic is the future. we're going to see a lot more animals and humans that have electronic components integrated with their bodies. >> suarez: frankenstein's cat. thank you very much. >> woodruff: on our website, you can see more of ray's conversation with the author as well as a slideshow of more of

the strange creatures discussed in the book. >> ifill: again, the major developments of the day. the uproar over government surveillance expanded to intelligence contractor edward snowden, who leaked the existence of top-secret programs. he said he did it because the public is owed an explanation. and bombings in iraq killed at least 57 people, as shi'ite- sunni violence surged again. >> woodruff: online, hitting the road with the nation's poet laureate. kwame holman has the details. >> holman: the library of congress has re-appointed natasha tretheway to be the nation's consultant in poetry and for her second term, she will join jeffrey brown for a series of "road trips" across the nation to places where poetry is plays an important role in people's lives. find the details on art beat. how closely tied is the health of trees to the health of humans? researchers from the u.s. forest service looked at data that suggests having fewer trees may be bad for you. all that and more is on our website, newshour.pbs.org.

gwen... and that's the "newshour" for tonight. on tuesday, we'll look at the latest efforts in the senate to pass comprehensive immigration reform. i'm gwen ifill. >> woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. we'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. thank you and good night. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: ♪ ♪ >> moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> by bp.

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